Friday, September 27, 2013

Valve therefore left open the possibility that whatever Steam Machines eventually make it to market next year could either be first- or third-party hardware. The company is putting out invitations for 300 Steam users to participate in a beta test they must qualify for by completing an “eligibility quest” that involves familiarizing themselves with Steam’s current features.

The other gaming thread died. Here’s a new one for those interested. I figured Steam looking for Beta Testers made for a good lead-in.

Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

Dishonored is a weird game, I never really got into it, the character models were too disfigured or something. I like sneak-based games though, I'm keen for the new Thief to come out in 2014.

Anyone try The Dark Mod? It's basically a recreation of the original Thief game made using the DOOM III engine, which, for all its shortcomings, really does a good job with shadows and darkness. It's free, I just started fooling around with it last week and it's pretty great. If you want to stock up on freebies this is a good one to add to your list.

I have now added more games to my computer today than I have in the last 4/5 months combined.

I'm looking forward to Dishonored simply because I'm given to understand that the best ending requires a non-lethal run. I really appreciate games that give that option, especially compared with games that try to tell a story involving somewhat realistic themes and characters that immediately lose immersion when you get to your next gauntlet of mooks to mow down. I enjoyed the Borderlands series because it's so over the top I'm not thinking about how all these thousands of bandits have families, whereas in Bioshock Infinite the game went from your companion running away from you after the first shootout to, within almost an instant, throwing you health and ammo while you murder hundreds of citizens of Columbia who are in several cases just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm looking forward to Dishonored simply because I'm given to understand that the best ending requires a non-lethal run. I really appreciate games that give that option, especially compared with games that try to tell a story involving somewhat realistic themes and characters that immediately lose immersion when you get to your next gauntlet of mooks to mow down.

Expect to spend most of the game sneaking around shooting guards in the dick (you'll be crouching) with some sort of tranquilizer crossbow.

in Bioshock Infinite the game went from your companion running away from you after the first shootout to, within almost an instant, throwing you health and ammo while you murder hundreds of citizens of Columbia who are in several cases just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm looking forward to Dishonored simply because I'm given to understand that the best ending requires a non-lethal run. I really appreciate games that give that option, especially compared with games that try to tell a story involving somewhat realistic themes and characters that immediately lose immersion when you get to your next gauntlet of mooks to mow down.

I enjoyed Dishonored and appreciated the option of taking down the multiple guards, etc., non-lethally. However, without giving away spoilers a number of the non-lethal mission-end options are morally repugnant and arguably worse than homicide.

However, without giving away spoilers a number of the non-lethal mission-end options are morally repugnant and arguably worse than homicide.

Excellent! I'll actually have a real choice to make about the right thing to do! One of my favorite parts of the Mass Effect series was deciding whether to overwrite the enemy Geth or just obliterate them. In all three playthroughs I ended up just wiping them out rather than forcibly changing their morality to suit my purposes, because I couldn't determine that it would be morally just to overpower their will. So genocide it had to be.

Expect to spend most of the game sneaking around shooting guards in the dick (you'll be crouching) with some sort of tranquilizer crossbow.

That's an interesting review. I find the Mass Effect series an interesting comparison to Bioshock Infinite, in that despite my Commander Shepard's annihilation of heaping piles of enemies I rarely felt like it was too far removed from the storylines, and there was enough depth to the world that it felt much more real than B:I.

eta: and on the broader issues of reviews in general I think it's dead on. But then, the gaming industry runs on reviews and companies are paid in accordance with their metacritic scores. Which, ugh, the problems inherent in that are just huge.

For the rest of you with even a passing interest in some of the best RPG's of all-time, the kindly elves at GOG.com are GIVING AWAY free copies of Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, both outstanding run isometric RPGs with great storytelling and lots of ways to successfully play through. Because they're more than a decade old I doubt there's a PC out there capable of posting on BBTF that won't run these just fine, so no excuses, get downloadin'!

I replayed F1 and F2 in advance of Fallout 3's release a few years ago-- they're worth time; the combat is much more challenging without the FPS dimension, and the story, especially in 2, is much better.

Green Man Gaming had Max Payne 1-3 cheap a couple of days ago. I haven't played 3, but replayed 2 not long ago, and it's a grim, grim game. Also worth playing.

eta: and on the broader issues of reviews in general I think it's dead on. But then, the gaming industry runs on reviews and companies are paid in accordance with their metacritic scores. Which, ugh, the problems inherent in that are just huge.

I skimmed the posted review. I haven't played Infinite yet, so I don't want to accidentally compromise any part of it if/when I do decide to play it. Some of the parts I did read about the review "industry" in general are spot on.

Hmm here is this interesting game on metacritic I have never heard of that got a 74 aggregate score. It could either be hot garbage or something you could spend hours with. You have no idea because every game had at least a few million dollars behind it from a recognizable publisher is going to score a 70 (apparently except NBA Live '14, ouch). But aside from all of that, like you said, the industry seems to rely on those numbers as the primary source of feedback/marketing and thus have a pretty heavy handed interested in the content/score (The Kane and Lynch incident).

I've never read that before, and I haven't playing "Infinite" yet, but I appreciate the sentiment. Game design has been in a rut for more than a decade now, with mostly cosmetic improvements to existing frameworks. I don't know that first-person shooters have advanced in any significant way since Deus Ex, Thief, Half Life, and System Shock 2 all came out within a couple of years almost 15 years ago. Skyrim is a great game *now* because the developers allowed users to modify the game extensively but it wasn't anything particularly special out of the box - given equivalent graphics I'd rather play vanilla Morrowind.

I really hoped we'd see big advances in two particular areas by now - better AI and wider integration of physics models in all manner of games. Instead we primarily got better meshes and bigger textures, which are nice, but something of a disappointment to me.

I think the budgets of AAA games basically kills innovation at the large company level, you can't afford a bust. At the same time I think that we have and will continue to see very strong indie/small shop developers, games like Journey and Minecraft are some of the best ever IMO, and it's because they accept that they're not going to be everything so they focus on a core concept and execute extraordinarily well on that concept while at the same time being very innovative in gameplay terms. What I'd like to see is more mid-budget games being made. Lower budgets would mean lower sales needed to recoup developing and marketing expenses while allowing smaller, more cohesive programming/writing teams to create more interesting stories. I think this could be really good for the industry, and good for games in general. If your AAA title is developed for 100m and you need to sell 2m copies just to break even you can't take any risks because you've got all your eggs in one basket, as compared to developing four 25m dollar games that use a two year old engine that can take some risks and both try new things/create new IP because if one of those four games is a breakout hit it'll fund the other three and if two are hits then you're looking at a bonanza.

I think the non-indie game industry is akin to the movie industry, in that we know what the future of AAA games are just as we know what the future of blockbuster tentpole movies are- some will be better than others, and some will be downright excellent, but few of them will be groundbreaking. But the movie industry has a good number of 10-50m dollar budget films that are both critical darlings and/or make a ####### of money, e.g. Black Swan (14m budget, 331m worldwide gross), Slumdog Millionaire (14m/384m), The Conjuring (20m/316m) etc. Sure it's nice to have a Pirates of the Caribbean/Call of Duty franchise that prints money despite gigantic budgets, but those aren't the norm and there's a ton of money to be made off of creating good mid-tier games.

Played through the first two missions of Dishonored last night. I realized it was really good when I alt-tabbed to find it was 11:30pm at night. I especially like that I can tell, just via gameplay design, that you're able to approach the missions in multiple ways even when using the same strategy. I somehow was given "credit" for killing someone in the first mission even though I'm pretty sure I didn't, so it's not a pure pacifist run, but I really enjoy the cat and mouse game that occurs when playing pure stealth.

Also, now that I've read that Bioshock Infinite review, I really want to play Last of Us given that the author discusses how much he liked it while calling out many of the problems I had with Bioshock: Infinite.

I think the non-indie game industry is akin to the movie industry, in that we know what the future of AAA games are just as we know what the future of blockbuster tentpole movies are- some will be better than others, and some will be downright excellent, but few of them will be groundbreaking. But the movie industry has a good number of 10-50m dollar budget films that are both critical darlings and/or make a ####### of money, e.g. Black Swan (14m budget, 331m worldwide gross), Slumdog Millionaire (14m/384m), The Conjuring (20m/316m) etc. Sure it's nice to have a Pirates of the Caribbean/Call of Duty franchise that prints money despite gigantic budgets, but those aren't the norm and there's a ton of money to be made off of creating good mid-tier games.

I think the people at Extra Credits were the first people I heard with this kind of idea. Their idea was more on the artistic/awards/critically acclaimed vs blockbuster type of movie, and the fact that a lot of major movie studios try to have at least 1-2 films a year that will make the awards circuit and show off the "artistic" capabilities of the studio. These are usually not made with a profit as the prime motivator, though as you listed sometimes they do incredibly well, but for critical acclaim and prestige among peers. The risk factor is so low that it's easy to come close enough to breaking even financially.

Sony seems to be doing some of this, as they have explicitly stated so many times how "indie" friendly the PS4 is and with the self publishing options. At the same time they are financing those games, I'm sure they are going to have a large team of people and $80+ million to throw at the next God Of War, Infamous, Unchartered, etc.

I don't know that first-person shooters have advanced in any significant way since Deus Ex, Thief, Half Life, and System Shock 2 all came out within a couple of years almost 15 years ago.

I like what the Borderlands series has done; essentially merging the action RPG genre (Diablo & its clones) with a first-person shooter. Sure, it's not revolutionary, but it's a fun twist.

Otherwise, I don't think they've changed much because people LIKE what they are right now. It's fun to sprint around as a total badass carrying several trucks worth of weapons and ammo while mowing down hordes of mooks. Most of the advances I could see them implementing would probably wind up hurting sales.

really hoped we'd see big advances in two particular areas by now - better AI and wider integration of physics models in all manner of games. Instead we primarily got better meshes and bigger textures, which are nice, but something of a disappointment to me.

You are not the only person. I stumbled upon this little partial interview with the original x-com creator who shares some of your opinions and frustrations.

It's fun to sprint around as a total badass carrying several trucks worth of weapons and ammo while mowing down hordes of mooks. Most of the advances I could see them implementing would probably wind up hurting sales.

How much of that is that people really enjoy the multiplayer elements of modern FPS? I'd love to see the analytics on how many owners of a COD game put less than 2 hours into the single player campaign.

Also, how the heck can these games cost so much to make when they're basically the same multiplayer platforms as previous ones?

How much of that is that people really enjoy the multiplayer elements of modern FPS? I'd love to see the analytics on how many owners of a COD game put less than 2 hours into the single player campaign.

Isn't there typically about 5 hours of SP content total?

Since the first Modern Warfare, infinity ward has continuously decreased the SP campaign every iteration. It's a reinforcing cycle. A lot of players don't care about SP, IW puts less effort into SP, crappier SP campaign means even less people play it.

Also, how the heck can these games cost so much to make when they're basically the same multiplayer platforms as previous ones?

Asset generation. Maybe some net code/tech to support the ever growing player base.

Since the first Modern Warfare, infinity ward has continuously decreased the SP campaign every iteration. It's a reinforcing cycle. A lot of players don't care about SP, IW puts less effort into SP, crappier SP campaign means even less people play it.

I have to disagree here. The single-player hasn't really gotten crappier so much as it has gotten shorter. That isn't necessarily bad either. In fact, I think Ghosts got it really right.

I may be atypical, but I usually play through the campaign before playing too much multiplayer, just to get a sense of the minor changes in feel. Each game has a slightly different delay on stuff like grenades and the knife, for example.

Also, how the heck can these games cost so much to make when they're basically the same multiplayer platforms as previous ones?

Those maps are pretty brilliantly designed, and getting better. One of the serious problems with games like COD in general is camping. You don't want camping to be a great strategy because it makes for boring, defensive games, but you also don't want to make the game all offense, because then it's all twitch and no brain. I'm always pretty impressed at how few places on the map have only one direction to watch, and how apparently randomly placed obstacles are built to make individual spots sub-optimal for sniping.

It's also important to make sure that each map works for each game type, and most COD games add one or two game types. Search and Destroy plays very differently than Domination which plays very differently from Blitz. Squads is a pretty serious upgrade to the COD franchise as well.

I don't think they've changed much because people LIKE what they are right now. It's fun to sprint around as a total badass carrying several trucks worth of weapons and ammo while mowing down hordes of mooks. Most of the advances I could see them implementing would probably wind up hurting sales.

I think there's also a very different dynamic in games. I'm not dropping $65 on something that might be a 4 or might be a 10, but you'll consistently get my money for an 8. I know that if I buy the newest COD game, I'll play it for at least two hundred hours. It will be a background activity for socializing with friends that don't live nearby. The newest Assassin's Creed is often similar to the older games, but they add just enough new ideas to keep me coming back. I've probably dropped 60-70 hours into that game so far and I'm deliberately putting off the final mission because I don't want it to end.

A lot of the criticisms that are leveled at AAA titles are the same sort of criticisms that we could apply to practically any mainstream media. They're safe, and so they're often formulaic. I think that's okay, though, if it's a good formula that provides a lot of fun, and there's some space for innovation. You want some good opportunities for independent development, especially since any smart big studio is watching. Portal 2, which is a pretty spectacular big-studio game, cannibalizes elements from the independent game Tag: The Power of Paint, in much the same way that the original Portal cannibalizes elements from Narbacular Drop.

Bioshock: Infinite, for all its flaws, is still a remarkable game in a number of ways. The character models are as lifelike as I've seen without falling into the uncanny valley. The score is wonderful. The plot is something that stays with you long after you've finished the game. I played it on the second-easiest difficulty level and I was happy to quickly get through the combat to just look around and watch the story develop.

Does anyone except for me play League? Now that I have a good desktop im thinking about stalking Dan through TF2 servers and asking him why the Zips for my favorite players are so negative.

One thing about consoles vs computers is the fact that computers have some sweet ass point and click adventure games from all of time that would never have been sent to consoles. But consoles have Nintendo games and while Nintendo isn't always the portrait of hasty with their releases theres something to be said for the average quality of nintendo games. The DS and 3DS are remarkable systems with incredibly deep libraries.

I have to disagree here. The single-player hasn't really gotten crappier so much as it has gotten shorter. That isn't necessarily bad either. In fact, I think Ghosts got it really right.

Yes I was using the term crappier when the more appropriate term(s) is shorter and less resource focused. To me, someone who doesn't play competitive shooters, but loves a good SP shooter adventure, each iterative CoD cycle is crappier. I played quite a bit of the original CoD4: MW SP at a friends house and really liked it. I have seen little sense then (sans zombie mini-games) that interests me.

To me, someone who doesn't play competitive shooters, but loves a good SP shooter adventure, each iterative CoD cycle is crappier. I played quite a bit of the original CoD4: MW SP at a friends house and really liked it. I have seen little sense then (sans zombie mini-games) that interests me.

Try Squads mode if you've got a buddy with the Ghosts. One option is essentially "single-player multiplayer" which might be up your alley.

I've long had a general idea for a game that I would love to play, but I'm guessing might appeal to an international audience of 3 or 4 people.

A historical sim, but where you do very little yourself. Instead it's a bit like historical strat-o-matic. The majority of the game is picking from your nation's pool of randomly generated people to fill various positions (governor's of provinces, military commanders, tax collectors, court artists, ambassadors, financial advisors, religious leaders etc.). The rate of generation, quality of people, and traits/abilities of these people are variously weighted based on the various policies, wealth, and culture of your nation. Essentially the game is played almost entirely from your control/throne room. You do your best to distribute your scarce personnel over the realm, establishing priorities and hoping the incompetent ones you are forced to rely on don't do much damage. I'm imagining you giving out directives, and then sitting back and watching your subordinates screw up out of incompetence, treason, or infighting among themselves, and every now and then actually accomplishing what you want.

Every character is rated in the same categories of abilities and characteristics, and can theoretically be assigned any task, but as the game progresses and the civilization becomes more sophisticated the development of your education system becomes important as new characters have to be molded to fit into certain positions in order to keep up with the increasing demands of a developing society.

Not really. Contrarian click bait. I love this super-blowhardy nugget:

Tough criticism is an act of belief. It is sincere in its hopes for the future but clear-eyed about the present.

-vomit-

Games exist to be fun. Not to move the genre forward, or to explore "what this medium is capable of". Most players who gave Infinite a whirl had fun. Same with GTA V (another target of the review). So they, by definition, are 'good games'. The revealing part is at the end:

Most videogames are disappointing, and disappointing in dependable ways.

No they are not! We are in a tremendous age for games and gamers. No matter what you like, with a little effort you can find a truly awesome game to waste your life playing.

I agree with Robert - we're in a remarkable time for gaming. You've got AAA games like Grand Theft Auto were you have a fascinating world to play around in and Steam has been a great boost for indie game publishers. A world in which we have both NBA2K14 and To the Moon is a terrific one.

Frankly some of the complaints in that review of Infinite are just trite. The writer spends an inordinate amount of time being fake-horrified that the civil rights movement in Columbia could be violent because the later civil rights movement in United States did a very good job at avoiding violence. But it was *never* fated that the 50s/60s civil rights movements would believe so much in peace - replace people like MLK with people like Daisy Fitzroy and things could have been very different.

Frankly some of the complaints in that review of Infinite are just trite. The writer spends an inordinate amount of time being fake-horrified that the civil rights movement in Columbia could be violent because the later civil rights movement in United States did a very good job at avoiding violence. But it was *never* fated that the 50s/60s civil rights movements would believe so much in peace - replace people like MLK with people like Daisy Fitzroy and things could have been very different.

I don't care enough to go back and read him, but I thought he was referring to the lack of slave revolts precipitating the end of slavery, not the civil rights movement. Which seemed to me stunningly disingenuous, since said liberation was enacted by the bloodiest war in the history of this country. But this isn't the politics thread, so enough of that.

He has a similarly tendentious review of Skyward Sword a while back. I don't disagree with all the criticisms--I don't think the combat was particularly great in Infinite, and it did feel somewhat incongruous with the story being told. It was still one of the most gripping games I've played in years, and one I would strongly recommend to anyone with the slightest taste for that kind of thing.

I also noticed that Demon's Souls was one of the only games he would consider a "10". I don't hate Demon's Souls--I thought it was pretty good--but I hate a lot of the praise it receives. It's basically a pretty standard action RPG with a deliberately clunky fighting system, together with a harsh death penalty and positive incentives for pvp griefing. Not that all the praise was insincere, but I think a lot of people praised the game more for what it represents than for how good it really was.

Games exist to be fun. ...Most players who gave Infinite a whirl had fun... So they, by definition, are 'good games'.

What? Are you serious? No, Infinite is a terrible game. There are plenty of movies that I love which are horrible. That doesn't make them good movies, even though I love them.

Whether or not you enjoy something does not make it good or bad. Infinite is a bad game because it's gameplay is crap, and even if it were a good corridor shooter, that has nothing to do with the reason why people like the game (which are mostly that it's pretty and has a different story).

I guess I've been out of the loop for a while as far gaming goes (or never in it)

What does AAA mean in a video gaming context? As far as I can tell it means a mainstream big budget game?

EDIT: Wikipedia suggests it is either, Anti-Aircraft Artillery, the Adopt-an-Alleyway youth empowerment project, or the Alberta Association of Architects (which might be cool because I think my ex-girlfriend might be a member of that).

I enjoyed Infinite as a film; I enjoyed the Booker/Elizabeth story. I enjoyed the setting, loved the steampunkishness. But the race stuff is terrible, in a medium that has tended toward being really bad at representing race in a non-simplistic way.

replace people like MLK with people like Daisy Fitzroy

Yeah, if you replace an actual person with Levine's poorly fleshed-out attempt at a character, history would have unfolded differently.
===

Games exist to be fun. Not to move the genre forward, or to explore "what this medium is capable of".

These are statements about you and your orientation toward games, not about games themselves-- and that's totally fine attitude, but you have to accept that some people want them to be and do otherwise. I don't accept that we can tolerate the rampant sexism, for example, in a lot of games just because "games exist to be fun." That's not a shield I want to allow developers to hide behind. I think it's OK to disagree about the teleology and ontology of games, and to have these sorts of arguments.

And with Infinite, this is particularly applicable: you have a game that aspired to be more than just fun, that tried to make big and profound statements about race, about history, and about choice. So it is absolutely fair to criticize the game for the statements it made in those areas.

On of the things that happened with film criticism in the 1970s concerned precisely this notion of pleasure: if the experience of film-going was intended to induce pleasure, what assumptions about pleasurable pleasurable spectatorship were encoded film texts? In other words, "pleasure" is not a self-evident thing: what constitutes pleasurable looking for some will be different than what constitutes pleasurable looking for others. People who study games have borrowed that framework to study fun, because what's fun isn't necessarily self-evident either*-- it's an expression of the values of the player.

*You see this a lot in discussions of GTA: to those who have watched gameplay footage of GTA, it's really disturbing that millions of GTA players want to go around randomly killing innocents, gunning down cops, whatever. But to GTA players, that sort of symbolic violence is just one part of the complex world-exploring and systemic interaction that the game enables them to engage in-- and it is those dimensions of the game that are pleasure-inducing (this is essentially Steve Johnson's argument in Everything bad is Good for You).

Fitzroy wasn't fleshed-out anywhere near as she could have been, but she *was* a violent figure, with little interest in peace.

Right, because in order for the FPS to move forward as an FPS, she couldn't be interested in peace. That's part of the author's point in his piece--trying to tell the story Levine wants to tell, given the genre, means that the story's going to have internal inconsistencies. And it wasn't just that Fitzroy was violent (willing to use force to advance her cause), it was that, when the chips are down, she's not particularly moral, either. And that was the sort of lazy, "see-all-sides-are-bad" resolution to the moral quandary he set up-- just make them all ########, and you'll be cool with gunning down everyone, regardless of faction.

My biggest beef with the game was just around that question of choice: choice is such a major theme of the plot, but it just wasn't reflected in the on-the-rails gameplay. It reminded me a lot of Uncharted in this respect (which I enjoyed both as a film and as a game).

I agree with DP here. And the thing is, B:I was a significant step forward in this regard just for engaging with the issue rather than how most games don't even acknowledge it (especially when you're gunning down swarthy enemies). It's just that there needs to be more than making an effort. Especially when your gameplay is ####.

I've been playing Dishonored, going the no-kill route. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, but it throws me that after two missions the conversation's I'm having at the Loyalist base sound like they'd be the same regardless of whether I'd left a pile of bodies behind me in a roaring rampage of revenge or if I was a ghost that was never seen and the only people I even knocked out were those that were required by the mission. I'm also not that pleased that the "no-kill" method of resolving the second mission involved torture, although I might have just missed a way to do it simply through blackmail. Both pieces reduce the scope of the free will I'm given in choosing how to play the game, and weaken what is otherwise a very well designed and fun Thief-style game.

And then once I beat the game I imagine I'll go back and kill EVERYONE and see what that ending looks like.

choice is such a major theme of the plot, but it just wasn't reflected in the on-the-rails gameplay.

The first Bioshock and later Spec ops dealt with this. Largely saying you don't have choices in *these* types of games, and the player has no agency in the narrative. Both games illustrated how choices in games are merely the illusion of choice.

I have not played infinite, but I would guess it follow similar mechanisms that the first Bioshock did to create the "illusion of choices" theme.

I just need to take the time to play infinite. Hell I still need to play Bioshock 2.

My biggest beef with the game was just around that question of choice: choice is such a major theme of the plot, but it just wasn't reflected in the on-the-rails gameplay. It reminded me a lot of Uncharted in this respect (which I enjoyed both as a film and as a game).

I thought that was precisely the point: that choice is an illusion. The coin is always heads.

I had issues with Infinite, because the combat was relatively boring after the novelty of the different Vigours and the rails wore off. But I played on a relatively low difficultly so it wasn't too tedious. To me, it was more about just looking around at the environment and enjoying the story.

It's not a perfect game but there is enough greatness in it that most gamers should play it. It does show quite a bit off about the medium of games as interactive films.

You would not be missing much if you skipped Bioshock 2. It wasn't terrible, but it really didn't add much to the series.

I've been playing Dishonored, going the no-kill route. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, but it throws me that after two missions the conversation's I'm having at the Loyalist base sound like they'd be the same regardless of whether I'd left a pile of bodies behind me in a roaring rampage of revenge or if I was a ghost that was never seen and the only people I even knocked out were those that were required by the mission.

I had a lot more fun with Dishonored when I stopped being so strict about following the no-kill rules. I definitely tried to avoid conflict but if it was the natural extension of what I was doing, I rolled with it.

Just a reminder that the Great Steam Winter Sale begins tomorrow, a sale of such magnitude as to render the recent Autumn Sale a mere hiccup. Our BBTF "Borderlands 2" contingent could use one more warm body to absorb punishment from mutant monsters and you won't even have to leave the warmth of your mother's basements to come up with ~$5 to purchase it. Any additional suggestions for similarly reasonably-priced games are appreciated, as mentioned upthread I'll gladly pitch in, say, $20 for a 4-pack of "Dead Island" if there are 3 people here interested in hacking the heads off of zombies.

I've been playing "Payday 2: The Heist" a fair bit recently and to the absolute credit of my friend mentioned in #168 who said he couldn't play the game in good conscience because of all the cop-killing, well, there's a hell of a lot of cop killing in that game. It's a great game though, some similarities to "Left4Dead2" but much more sophisticated and requiring greater coordination between teammates. $13 well-spent in my opinion, if any of y'all can pick it up for that price or less I doubt you'll be disappointed.

I left the master race this weekend for a little slumming on some PS3 borderlands DLC and later PS4. The Tiny Tina Assault DLC is fantastic, and quite challenging on 3rd playthrough for a formally maxed character. I have no idea the price for just that DLC pack, but I would highly recommend it for the BBTF group at some point.

A friend of mine got a PS4 at Wal-mart Sunday mid-day. We played around with it all Sunday evening. The OS and UI is so much better than the PS3. Most things are quickly accessible, and it was very responsive even while we were installing and/or d/l a game. Didn't play around with the game DVR / share features much. The camera works well (face log in, voice commands, etc), but I can't see a big desire for it unless you plan on streaming. But the biggest improvement over the PS3 is the controller. Everything about the new controller is better than the old one. The sticks are tighter and have a better gripping surface, the triggers are actually triggers and not just big buttons to press, and the tiny speaker on the controller is one of those simple but great ideas that makes you wonder why no one else ever thought of it before. The ability for developers to have a separate local audio output in addition to the standard 5.1 output can really help immerse gamers more.

I played Battlefield 3 for a while with a great group, but haven't played 4 except a handful of times. Not sure it's worth picking up at all, really. I don't think I played the solo campaign one single time , though. All multiplayer.

I'll be down for some BL2 and Dead Island once I'm back from the holidays. Plan to purchase the former during the Steam sale (played the hell out of it for the 360, including Tiny Tina Assault, which I agree is awesome, in part for its meta-ness).

Really looking forward to Microsoft adding Windows integration for the Xbox One controller-- Steam works seamlessly with a 360 controller at present, which sort of erases some of the console/pc distinction.

Plan to purchase the former during the Steam sale (played the hell out of it for the 360, including Tiny Tina Assault, which I agree is awesome, in part for its meta-ness).

Did you find the DLC very challenging? I just wonder if it was just my scenario (hadn't played the game or any console game in 9 months, level 50 jumping to 3rd UVHM, playing with my brother who was 1.5 levels higher so everything scaled to him) or if the DLC was actually a lot more difficult than the main campaign. I struggled a lot during the entire session, even after I felt acclimated to the controller and game mechanics.

Did you find the DLC very challenging? I just wonder if it was just my scenario (hadn't played the game or any console game in 9 months, level 50 jumping to 3rd UVHM, playing with my brother who was 1.5 levels higher so everything scaled to him) or if the DLC was actually a lot more difficult than the main campaign. I struggled a lot during the entire session, even after I felt acclimated to the controller and game mechanics.

Reasonably challenging, but I thought the Hammerlock Big Game Hunt DLC was much harder. UVHM is a bit of a bear anyway you slice it; the game stops being a brainless romp and starts requiring a modicum of teamwork/tactics.

UVHM is a bit of a bear anyway you slice it; the game stops being a brainless romp and starts requiring a modicum of teamwork/tactics.

Good then. I'm glad that's the case, even if it made my jump back into the game difficult.

The level difference at the end of the curve is also a #####. He was 52 while I was still 50, so about 60% of all the enemies I was shooting at had the "too high of level" skull next to them. Plus each time I was leveling up I was gaining like 9-10% of additional health. A few levels makes a big difference.

I'd also be in for Dead Island (already own it and have actually played and beaten this one!). Likewise, I'd chip in with YR on four-packs if we get enough gamers rolling....

Hells yes, now there's some revenue sharing I can get behind!

What are some good multiplayer games folks can recommend here? FPS games are already well-represented with Dead Island and Borderlands 2, is there something else worth seeking out during the sale? I'd still be interested in having an Age of Empires II scrum with y'all, IIRC is supports up to 8 players and will run fine on even the crummiest of laptops.

I'd love to get a Civ V game going, also wouldn't mind finding at least 1 other person that plays Omerta.....I have tons of games already on Steam and would be totally down for trying pretty much anything and everything. Give me a time, place an name your game. I'm in.

I'd love to get a Civ V game going, also wouldn't mind finding at least 1 other person that plays Omerta.....I have tons of games already on Steam and would be totally down for trying pretty much anything and everything. Give me a time, place an name your game. I'm in.

Second the Civ V thing. Though I guess scheduling the block of time is going to be the big hurdle.

Greg - there is a utility you can download called Giant Multiplayer Robot. It links via Steam and is specifically designed to create Civ V multiplayer games in a "hot seat" fashion, each player taking their turn when they have the time, eliminating the need for everyone to be there at once. Obviously, the games take place over a much longer timespan, but it enables players to play together without sacrificing their daily necessities (work, kids, etc). It's worth checking out as the site describes the app much better then I ever could.

Greg - there is a utility you can download called Giant Multiplayer Robot. It links via Steam and is specifically designed to create Civ V multiplayer games in a "hot seat" fashion, each player taking their turn when they have the time, eliminating the need for everyone to be there at once. Obviously, the games take place over a much longer timespan, but it enables players to play together without sacrificing their daily necessities (work, kids, etc). It's worth checking out as the site describes the app much better then I ever could.

I'd heard of that...that would be a godsend as I haven't played much online Civ because in order to make it feasible that games are too short for my liking. I find it difficult to play on anything faster than epic.

Though I would think it would be still a good idea to work out some kind of schedule. It would be nice to have a weekend session where we pound out a few dozen turns over an hour or two, then spend the rest of the week moving piece-meal if the opportunity comes up.

Both Magic the Gathering 2014, and Hearthstone (free from Blizzard if you register for the Beta) are fun, two player games. Magic is a version of the CCG, and Hearthstone is just a rip off of that to make it more video game friendly

Greg - Any time that works for you will work for me. It'd be even better if we can get some more on board. I have played many hours solo and have yet to get a game going in multiplayer.

I'd say Saturdays are a good time for me, though the next two are taken up by holiday-ing.

Actually I'm probably free for Friday, Saturday early afternoon or Sunday if anyone is up for blocking off...let's say an hour or two?...to sink our teeth into a good session. With brisk play I bet we can get most of the way through the medieval era in that time.

Does anybody play iOS games? I'm trying to figure out how to come to grips with the platform; I have a few puzzle games (Dots, Hundreds) that are good on the phone; I've enjoyed some of the tower defense style ones on the iPad (Kingdom Rush, PvZ); there are occasional oddities (like rymdkapsel, which I loved loved loved). The big shiny headlining stuff like Infinity Blade leaves me cold -- the controls are wrong, and the whole experience feels strange and bad, like drinking too much cough syrup right before an abstract algebra test. I've tried some of the Rouge-likes, but the all port the (terrible) classic controls.

Clearly, excellent games can be made for the platform; I just don't know how to find them.

Finally, I hate hate hate pay-to-win. I always prefer to pay up front.

I don't know if Titanfall will be sufficient to get me to buy an XBONE. I certainly won't be upgrading the PS3 any time soon, not before Destiny (or Borderlands 3). Of course, I just recently got Amazon's yearly "We've been notified by the publisher that the ship date for The Last Guardian has been changed again, to January 2015." I'm not even sad about it anymore.

Name your time Greg, I will definitely play. Also, if anyone else wants to join in but doesn't yet have the game, Civ V Gold and the Brave New World expansion set are bundles together for $19.95 today over at getgamesgo. Great deal and includes pretty much all DLC except the new Scrambled Continents Map pack.

Amazon is also live with their good deals today: EU IV is $9.99 (I've been waiting for this price drop!), Borderlands 1 GOTY + Borderlands 2 is $11.99, there's the X-Com pack for $9.99....tons more, just go check it out....but don't blow your load before the Steam sale and this week's Humble Bundle go live in the next couple of hours as well.....

It literally took ALL the patience I had....and I thought I blew it yesterday when I realized I missed it being the same price in the Humble Store for 24 hours. I'll add you on Steam. I think the 6-8pm time would work perfectly for me as well....by then, the wife will be off to work and I should be totally free!

Open casting call for a Civ V game! First session Friday at 6pm EST. Play until 8 (or any time we feel like stopping)

I figure 8 Civs should be plenty. Assuming we have fewer volunteers than that we can just fill in the rest with AI.

Have you ever used the Gaming Bot? I've downloaded, but I'm not entirely clear on what kind of game I should be setting up.

[edit: hopefully you're not lost in Europa Universalis by tomorrow. I think I played an embarrassing 16 hours within 48 hours of it coming out. Sometimes I wish steam didn't record how long you played games]

I feel ya on the Steam timer! I am not even letting myself install EU IV until after the holidays or my family will think something happened to me. I'm in tomorrow and will do what I can to hopefully find us some players. As far as GMR goes, I have used it a total of one time, for about 10 turns or so before the other cat gave up. He was the host and had set the game up, but I fiddled around with it and it seems fairly easy. The only potential hang-up will be in the DLC. Everyone has to be running the same "version" of the game as far as having Gods & Kings and Brave New World installed.

Dead Island GOTY Edition is $5. Bioshock Infinite is $10 (see what all the griping beginning at #209 is about!). Dishonored (as praised in this thread) a mere $7.50! Plus other cool stuff, take a look.

I'm in on DI, and already own it. I also see Monaco 4-pack is only $8.99. That's another I already own, however haven't gotten to play much. It's supposed to be massive amounts of fun on multiplayer though. Anyone want to give it a try sometime, on me?

Hey, I see Guns of Icarus Online is available for a song, one of my friends who is a game developer said he'd heard good things about it for online team play; 4-person teams piloting opposing steampunk dirigibles with up to 8 ships competing at once. Could be fun, and for under $4 a nose how much risk are you taking?

I rented it and tried it on the PS3 when it launched. It was alright, but I didn't feel it was worth the full price tag. Just something about Diablo/Boderlands loot crawling in a zombie-bashing adventure that is set in a sun shining tropical paradise felt off to me. Plus 1st person melee mechanics on the PS3 were pretty awful. It has to be better with keyboard & mouse

Apparently, you cannot buy a 4-pack of a game you already own, not even as a gift. Not cool. I'd still buy single copies though as a gift, if anyone's interested in Monaco. I like the idea of Guns Of Icarus, too...may have to snatch that up.